We must band together to stop the Delta water raid

Saturday

Jun 4, 2011 at 12:01 AM

The battle to force a peripheral canal on the five Delta counties is entering a new phase under the leadership of Dr. Jerry Meral, Gov. Jerry Brown's appointee to oversee the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Water exporters started the BDCP process in 2006 so they could get "take" permits - permits to kill fish - in connection with a massive conveyance of Sacramento River water around or under the Delta.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla

The battle to force a peripheral canal on the five Delta counties is entering a new phase under the leadership of Dr. Jerry Meral, Gov. Jerry Brown's appointee to oversee the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Water exporters started the BDCP process in 2006 so they could get "take" permits - permits to kill fish - in connection with a massive conveyance of Sacramento River water around or under the Delta.

Under the past governor, the BDCP process was run by a steering committee of export contractors. They failed to meet their deadline in the fall for producing a document for environmental review. Now the process is firmly under the control of Meral and the California Natural Resources Agency.

Local counties, water agencies, farmers and fishermen criticized the BDCP for denying them a meaningful role in planning for the Delta's future. Meral's response has been to create 13 working groups and to give non-exporters four days' formal notice to let him know which ones they want to join. The deadline for this formal notice was May 27.

Meral expects some of the groups to complete their work by the end of June.

Those opposing a peripheral canal are already spread thin and facing tight budgets. For all intents and purposes, this fragmented process with its telescoped timing excludes them.

The fact is, local representation has been outfunded and outnumbered since day one. Wealthy exporters are paying in part for this planning, but resource agency staff support is underwritten by taxpayers. Water contractors and state agencies are acting as a taxpayer-financed business liaison for a predetermined project. Their combined resources far exceed the resources of small water and reclamation districts and citizen's groups.

Groups like Restore the Delta have again been left with no option but to participate from the periphery of the process. We will be making public comments, but we lack the staff and resources necessary for meaningful engagement and participation.

Meral's working groups represent the bureaucratic model at its finest. They're a fresh coat of paint on the same bad project, an antiquated 19th-century approach to a 21st-century challenge. Meral is calling this process transparent, but the goal hasn't changed: just enough habitat protections to justify a canal or tunnel.

And it is hard to consider working in good faith with the same Westside water interests who are pushing legislation - like Congressman Devin Nunes' HR1837 - to renege on previous restoration agreements and to take away senior water rights from Delta farmers.

The history of water in California is full of promises made to those who live where the water comes from. Time and again, those promises have been broken by those who want to take the water somewhere else. They have been broken especially in the case of the southern Delta, which has serious water quality problems as a result of decades of water exports.

By the time the San Joaquin River reaches the Delta, its flow has been reduced by upstream diversions and its quality has been seriously degraded by discharge of toxic wastes from the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. The Sacramento River is the main source of freshwater available for human and environmental uses in the Delta. Water contractors want a peripheral canal capable of diverting almost the entire Sacramento River flow. Water contractors will not be satisfied until the northern portion of the Delta is as water deprived as the southern part.

The loss of that much freshwater in the Delta itself, coupled with proposals to turn large portions of the south Delta into tidal wetlands or open water for habitat, would make farming in the Delta impossible, affecting the economy of the entire region. Altering the hydrology of the Delta would also worsen saline intrusion into groundwater in the eastern part of San Joaquin County.

The entire Delta region can't afford this. San Joaquin County, with one-third of its land lying in the Delta, can't afford it. And Stockton, already battered economically, certainly can't afford it.

During the recent area lawsuit over the addition of prisons to San Joaquin County, the business community and local government worked together to advocate for a best possible outcome for the region. Although area businesses and local government agencies are cash-strapped presently, the failure to engage in Delta-related issues will result in state and federal officials making decisions that will permanently damage our regional economy and environmental health.

Somehow, we all need to muster our overstretched resources to fight this latest grab for Delta water. Now is the time for business and community leaders in the region to act!

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla is a Stockton resident and executive director of Restore the Delta, made up of more than 7,000 Californians who want to see Delta communities and fisheries protected.